In those days, it was all about honing my skills & learning the "thinking/situational" part of the game. Both of those parts continued to improve as I got older & a little more seasoned. I began pitching about 6 years into my softball career. Career? LoL. It's not like I got paid or anything. Actually, I always put my own teams into the leagues & paid for them myself.
I got into pitching because of the lack of true pitchers. Just throwing strikes is NOT pitching. Moving the ball around, changing height, depth, arm angle, working the count ... THAT'S pitching. And, of course, fielding your position. In those days, if you hit the middle on me ... you were OUT! I loved having them hit back at me. Not so much anymore.
With the aging process comes a decline in skills, reaction time & agility.
"Short, fat & stupid is no way to go thru life, son." - Dean Wormer 'Animal House'
I've noticed that over the years, the ground has apparently gotten lower by at least one foot as my glove doesn't seem to reach it anymore, when I try to bend over. (could be the big belly?)
As my reactions began to wane I started wearing more battle armor. Knee pads, shin guards ... eventually a face mask. I've been hit my fair share of times & no matter how much I cover parts of my body, the ball ALWAYS seems to find an uncovered section. Not kidding. Happened again last night.
So my revelation is that although my early days were spent honing my skills, my twilight days are spent coming up with fixes, patches & work-arounds to make up for lost reactions & abilities. Veteran Savvy just isn't getting the job done anymore. Playing against guys half my age doesn't seem to be helping, either. In my mind, I'm still that skinny kid who's their age with their abilities. My body apparently knows otherwise. And, it appears that my mind & body are not communicating with each other. If they did ... they'd have already figured this out.
Oh well ... new season starts in a few weeks. Here we go again. FULL Catcher's Shin Guards on the mound next season. Yup ... I'm running out of ideas. (sigh)
WINK
